You may have seen a viral video [Vimeo.com/933437548 starting at the 24:45 minute mark] in the spring of 2024, in which a pastor’s sermon is interrupted by an unhoused man in the service shouting profanities—an outburst welcomed by the preacher with surprising and heartwarming results. That pastor, Ed Newton of Community Bible Church in San Antonio, Texas, also leads a congregation that is on both the largest (No. 21) and fastest-growing (No. 47) lists this year. The church has grown by 17% this past year to 17,311 average attendance, while serving the seventh largest city in America by population.
Outreach sat down with Ed to discuss his personal background—which uniquely prepared him to be attentive to those many might overlook—and what CBC is doing to draw people into authentic community.
Our viral world has a short memory, but I am sure many of our readers remember a clip of one of your sermons—interrupted by an unhoused man in the audience shouting profanity. It was a moment that highlighted the grace of God and the beauty of his church. You were very attentive to what that moment demanded. Especially with a church as large as CBC, that’s not something that every congregation can take for granted from their pastor. Where does that attentiveness come from for you?
Well, going back to the beginning, both of my parents were deaf, and my mom had cerebral palsy. I was an only child. We lived in government-subsidized housing in Orlando, Florida, for deaf and handicapped people. As a kid, I was learning to do wheelies in wheelchairs, and I thought it was normal for all your neighbors to be handicapped. Apparently, it’s not. This was prior to the Americans With Disabilities Act, and deaf people had a harder time than they do now. I was the primary communicator for my mom and dad. Everywhere we went, I ordered for them. I talked on the phone for them. PTA meetings—about me—were interpreted by me to them. That was my whole world.
There’s a lot of discrimination against the deaf. It was hard to hear people make fun of them, and hard having to interpret through a lot of that with my parents. It built sympathy in me. When you always have to defend your parents, it’s hard. If you’ve ever been around deaf people, they often have very tonal noises that they make when they are trying to speak. So in public settings it was really embarrassing at times, when I was a kid. I knew what they were saying, but others didn’t and it drew all kinds of attention to us. People would make fun of them. And that made me angry at how society treated them.
“God dwells among the people who long for him. God wants to be wanted. And we want to tell him we want him.”
Because I was young, and bridging a deaf world and a hearing world, a lot of frustrations came early. I had to talk to grownups a lot, because I was my parents’ interpreter for everything. And of course, in hindsight, God was using those experiences. When I was about 10 years old, I was interpreting for my parents at a McDonald’s. A sweet older African-American woman put her hand on my shoulder, and asked me, “Do you do this everywhere you go?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“One day God’s going to greatly use you,” she said.
Those early experiences now influence my work as a pastor and what we’re trying to do here at the church—especially helping those who are disadvantaged to feel like this is a place where they can find hope and healing.
What was your relationship to faith back then?
I was wide open to God since I was a kid, but I didn’t become a Christian until I was 15 or 16. We’d only go to church at Christmas and Easter, which were usually the only services where there might be an interpreter for the deaf. At one point, I was a freshman in high school in Orlando, and on my birthday—which had really been a bad day—my parents told me that there was a church down the road with an interpreter, and that we would go. So we went. And I got saved.
There were 50 adults in this church for a classic Wednesday night Baptist prayer meeting, and this guy’s up there preaching about forgiveness. I didn’t even know what an “invitation” was. I just walked forward while the guy was talking. (So when people interrupt in services I know what that’s like because I was once the interruption.) My first encounter with Jesus was me walking up to a preacher in the middle of his sermon, going, “I want this Jesus.”
What took you into ministry?
Word got out from that prayer meeting that a church down the road had interpreters practicing in the church, because they wanted to be more welcoming, but they had no deaf people. We showed up late at this church one day, and the whole church was singing in sign language. It was just a simple chorus, but no one was deaf in the church, and they were still doing it. I absolutely melted, tears flowing for my parents. Anyway, I signed a visitor card at the church, but I didn’t know the church was going to visit me the following Tuesday. So I was pretty surprised when the youth pastor visited my home with some high school kids, and they invited me to join the youth group, which I did.
My goal at the time was to play college basketball. There was just one problem. I couldn’t pass the SAT. A perfect score was a 1600. I got 540. My test scores were so low that guidance counselors discouraged me from even applying. I went to church through the remainder of high school, and was about to take the G.I. Bill and go into the military. I took the test one more time in my senior year and brought my score up … to a 560. I just felt dumb.
“Oil flows in empty vessels, just like for the widow in the story of Elijah. God emptied the vessel of me so that he could fill it.”
Then my senior year, right before I graduated high school, I got called to ministry. It was a Sunday night service. This guy’s preaching Isaiah 6: “Who will go for us?” I am just emotionally wrecked, and I believe that God wants to use my life for students. I walk forward to the front afterward and say, “I believe that God’s called me to ministry. I just need you to know I only got a 540 on my SAT.’’
He looked at me and said, I’ll never forget this, “Son, I need you to hear me say this: Serving God has nothing to do with your ability, but it has everything to do with your availability.”
And I said, “I’m in.”
Shortly after that, my high school basketball coach—who wasn’t even a Christian—called me to say, “There’s a Christian college down in south Florida that needs a point guard.” That’s how I ended up at a Bible college that was able to look past the test scores. I learned the Bible there, met my wife, graduated, went to seminary. The guy who couldn’t pass the SAT was the first in his family to graduate college. Today I have two master’s degrees and a doctoral degree.
In seminary, I got an internship at a church. I was working with college students, and before we knew it, a 20-person group turned into 85 kids meeting in a packed 1,200-square-foot house for Bible study, with college students parking all over our lawn. During that time, I had a powerful experience while preaching at a youth conference in Alabama—a sense of revival broke out, and I felt a call from God to be an evangelist. The timing wasn’t right yet, but as I discerned it in the coming days with my wife, God confirmed that call to a unique expression of full-time ministry. Immediately after that, we found out my wife was pregnant—and due at the same time I would be quitting my job at the church. But after four years serving there, we knew we had to follow the call. They took up a generous love offering to send us out, and we set off on the road to preach.
That’s a far cry from leading one of the largest churches in the nation. Connect the dots for us?
Well, I ended up spending 13 years working as an itinerant evangelist. During that time, I served as a guest preacher at the men’s conference at CBC for six years. The founding pastor, Robert Emmitt, called me one day.
“Ed,” he said. “God told me you’re supposed to be the pastor of this church.”
I was shocked. “Pastor Robert, what do you mean? I’ve never pastored before in my life.”
At the time, just for reference, CBC had 379 staff members.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.
He said, “God told me to tell you that he’ll take care of you. I believe you’re the guy.”
And it turned out that I was. I became pastor in 2016. I came off the road after working for over a decade as a youth evangelist to pastor a church. This church. Guys like me don’t do that. I had been thrown into the deep water.
There must have been challenges in that transition.
It was the largest pivot in my life. There were huge challenges. Everybody wants the anointing, myself included. But we don’t want the crushing. But man, God had to purify me of me.
When I became pastor, 4,000 people left the church. Think about that! I had to move through an identity crisis. God had put me here, but that didn’t mean that it was easy. I mean, the founding pastor had been voted one of the top 25 most influential men in San Antonio. He had been so gracious to me. “You don’t need to fill my shoes,” he said. “I’m taking them with me. Be you.”
But I just wasn’t used to the rhythms of pastoral ministry. When you’re the evangelist on the road, there’s not a culture of staying. You “blow in, you blow up, and you blow out.” You do your thing. If you aren’t invited back, you just move on to the next place. But now, I was face-to-face with people over the long term. I had to work through the identity crisis of who I really was. I had to wrestle with imposter syndrome. God, I felt, I know you got me here, but I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin. I had to deep dive through a lot of pain and process. I had to work to know who I am and whose I am. I had to work through self-awareness—both my giftings and my weaknesses. I had to learn to recognize that I can be my own worst enemy.
“I’m for events. I love them. But they’re not enough. They have to have the next step into community as a vital part of them.”
If someone doesn’t feel comfortable in their own skin, they feel like they have to put on someone else’s skin. It’s no different from the story of David trying on Saul’s armor. I was trying to wear someone else’s armor. But I eventually came to the conclusion through a lot of pain and process that God never intended me to wear someone else’s armor. The founding pastor had tried to tell me that, but when you face criticism in a space that’s very public, it’s hard.
My sanctification process was pretty public. And that was hard. I didn’t know how to do it. How do you handle compliments? How do you handle criticism? For me, it was a journey of self-awareness—what’s it like to be on the other side of me? I had to figure out how to lead myself before I could lead others. I had to get to a place of mental health, wrestling with anxiety and depression. I didn’t want to fail. I put tremendous pressure on myself. I felt like a fluke. I wasn’t qualified for this. I didn’t have prior experience. I had great people who believed in me, but it felt like the voice of criticism was louder than all that. I ended up conforming to what I felt I should be. But when you do that, eventually one day you look in the mirror and ask, Who am I?
Through a process of counseling and inviting honest feedback in my life, I became more and more comfortable with the gifting that God had given me. I embraced that I didn’t have to fight for acceptance, because I already had it. A revolutionary idea for me was that I didn’t have to die for this church because Jesus already did. Another revolutionary idea was that before Jesus ever did a sign, miracle or wonder, the Father spoke pleasure and acceptance over him. Jesus operates from acceptance, not for acceptance. It’s the devil who tried to make Jesus prove himself (in Matthew 4).
If we’re not careful, we can believe the lies of our society—that our sermons define us, or our platform, or our following, or our leadership capital, or whatever. We strive for those things. But when we do that, like the quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” And that thief comes for all of us. When I moved away from this, I became more secure, more able to celebrate other pastors, more able to celebrate the victories in other people. To really embrace the kingdom mindset. To really live openhandedly.
What did you learn about God during this time?
Well, the truly major pivot for me was an encounter with the Holy Spirit about three years ago. Coming out of a Baptist background, I understood the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but I didn’t understand the function of the Holy Spirit. I didn’t understand the empowerment, or how to walk in joy and the other fruit of the Spirit. I knew all those things, but what does that look like in reality? Being around different denominations had allowed me to enjoy the beauty of the Spirit, and there was such a magnetic pull. I want more of that. I want to know that. I began a pursuit to know the Holy Spirit better.
Pastor Max Lucado, who is a pastor in our city, was a major part of this for me. He’s been on a journey himself, which he’s shared publicly. One day, he asked me the most amazing question anyone ever asked me about the Holy Spirit.
He asked me, “Ed, do you open every gift that has your name on it at Christmas?”
“Of course, Pastor Max,” I said. “Who doesn’t do that?”
“For real,” he said, “do you open every gift under that tree?”
I asked him what he was trying to say to me.
He replied, “I wonder how many people have gifts from the Holy Spirit that are left unopened under the tree of Calvary?”
That rocked me. I began to pray, God, whatever gifts you have for me under the cross of Calvary, I want to open them. And he began to answer that prayer.
But here’s the interesting thing: The gifts were not more “stage” giftings. It was never that. It wasn’t so I could be a better preacher or draw more attention to myself. It was actually so that I could walk in more joy. More fullness. More kingdom awareness. It was to grow in my ability to see people the way God sees people.
“Prayer is not preparation for the work, it is the work.”
See, oil flows in empty vessels, just like for the widow in the story of Elijah. God emptied the vessel of me so that he could fill it. Pastor Max Lucado helped me understand that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not just a second baptism, it’s a third baptism, and a fourth, and a daily baptism. Every day we’re emptied and filled. What does it look like to walk with an awareness of the Holy Spirit who seeks to guide you like a sailboat in the wind? Asking that was revolutionary for me three years ago. I began to pray, God, we believe that you’re doing something here at our church. Holy Spirit, you’re welcome here. You disrupt and do whatever you want to do here. We’ll say yes. So when you watch in that video [referenced in the introduction], you see me pause, I am literally talking to the Holy Spirit. What do you want me to do?
Craving power isn’t what this is about. I want to know the Holy Spirit. I want to be a better husband, a better dad. I want to see people differently—to have “eyes to see.” I want what happens in the gatherings of our church to be the overflow of what’s happening during the week.
How do you share this with your people? A megachurch setting can make it easy for people to become “spectator Christians.” How are you discipling people into that active awareness?
For us it’s about community. A phrase I use often is, “You don’t grow a church in rows. You grow it in circles.” We have made a determined and conscious decision to emphasize community groups as to how we do this. I often say from the stage, “If you have only one hour a week to be connected to CBC, don’t be in this service. Get in a community group.” It’s counterintuitive. Knowing names and needs, and being in a faith community where you can walk this Jesus journey out with other people and glean and grow with others is more important than sitting in the service.
For us, everything we do from a strategic standpoint is intended to push people to get into authentic community. We look to Luke 6 for our path to this. Jesus went up the mountain to spend time with the Father, then down the mountain to spend time in the inner circle of his disciples, then he turned to go out after those who were far from God. Our discipleship mode is called an “up, in and out” lifestyle. We teach people how to spend time with their Father, how to spend time with their spiritual family, and how to spend time with people who are far from God. We believe fully that if you get groups, you get the gathering. But if you get the gathering, you’re not guaranteed to get the group[s].
What are you seeing as you shift that emphasis?
This has always been part of the direction of the church. We just had to create simple processes of onboarding people. The biggest missing piece is assimilation—how do we move people from the gathering into a group or a place of service based on their gifts? It’s one thing to talk about this from the stage, but it’s another to actually onboard people. We’ve tried to put language to it and make it simple. The biggest challenge for churches our size is fighting for simplicity. You have to fight for simplicity. Churches our size will be more known for what they say no to than for what they say yes to. The missional clarity has to be there, otherwise it’s like everybody is just doing what’s “right in their own eyes.”
“A revolutionary idea for me was that I didn’t have to die for this church because Jesus already did.”
We want everything we do to have a scope and sequence to help build spiritual maturity. If that’s not happening, then all we’re doing is feeding the consumerism of event gatherings. I’m for events. I love them. But they’re not enough. They have to have the next step into community as a vital part of them.
What else would you coach pastors to pay attention to?
Prayer is not preparation for the work, it is the work. If you were to come to CBC, I would tell you the power source is the intercessory prayer ministry that is undergirding all of it—praying through the service, praying through the week, walking the parking lot, praying over rooms, believing in faith that God would do the miraculous. It’s a spirit of anticipation with a spirit of expectation that the Spirit of God will move. Our prayer ministry is the bedrock of everything that is happening at CBC right now. It’s the gasoline on the fire.
Building that culture of prayer is about helping people understand that prayer changes things. We pray in belief, pounding on the door of heaven, asking God to move. It’s yielding, surrendering, submitting. When you move into seasons of prayer—we have 21 days of prayer and fasting, prayer gatherings and things like that—we pray intentionally before every service, and I am anointed with oil before every service. We believe that God dwells among the people who long for him. God wants to be wanted. And we want to tell him we want him. That creates an expectation among a large group of people that God is going to do something. Prayer is not us getting what we want from God, it’s God getting what he wants in us.
As you look back at your story up to this point, what stands out to you?
I asked my dad one day when I was in my 30s, “Dad, do you ever wish Jesus had just healed you of your deafness?”
And this is the moment where it all just clicked for me.
He replied, “No.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked him.
“You,” he said.
“What?” I replied.
He said, “Isn’t it crazy that your whole life you were speaking on behalf of your mom and I, and all the while God was training you to speak on behalf of him?”
“The gospel still works. Activate it by the power of the Holy Spirit. That power raised Jesus from the dead. Who are we to think that we could live without it?”
Everyone took notice of Anthony and Michael’s story in the video. But here at CBC that kind of stuff really happens all the time. See, the gospel of Jesus still works. The whole gospel. The reality is that yes, Jesus saves our soul, but Jesus also came for the whole person—mind, body, soul and spirit. I believe the gospel doesn’t just change someone’s life now, but their whole future life, and the lives of those around them. I would encourage all of us to keep preaching a bloody cross and an empty tomb. The gospel still works. Activate it by the power of the Holy Spirit. That power raised Jesus from the dead. Who are we to think that we could live without it?
Preach that Bible. Preach that gospel. Be a church that welcomes home prodigals.